Some Kind of Shooting Star
by thebluefeather
Summary: Nobody's coming down to save them. One-shot for now. {Bellarke}


A/N: Bellarke AUish. This is actually a WIP in my head, but I'm **super **busy, and I don't know when I'll get time to add to this. So for the time being, I'm going to leave this as a one-shot, but hopefully you'll all see a chapter 2 in the future.

* * *

"Raven, _now," _Clarke gritted out, holding her freshly scrubbed hands and forearms out in front of her, poised above Finn's bloodied torso, just as she had been for quite some time.

Finn had a knife embedded God-knew-how-deep in his chest, and she had to talk to her mother that minute, or better yet an hour prior, but she couldn't. She couldn't because Raven was still hunched over the battered, water-logged radio with a trembling tension in her narrow shoulders because she _still _hadn't fixed it. It was taking too long.

"I'm trying!" Raven snapped, her strong voice cracking roughly and causing the room's fifteen-odd occupants to flinch. She stood with her palms braced on the table, head hung, and Clarke would have felt sympathy for the other girl on any other day. As it was, she just didn't have room for that emotion. "I'm just—it's not _fucking working!" _

"Raven, you can do this, ok?" Clarke pitched her voice so Raven could hear it over the bluster of the storm and the dull murmur of the crowded dropship before hissing under her breath, "Dammit, Bellamy."

They needed that radio. That reckless, stubborn asshole was going to get Finn killed all because of a stupid, selfish decision. And if that happened, Clarke wasn't sure she could be held responsible for her actions. Exile would be too good for him.

"Clarke? What do we do?" Octavia's voice brought her from her internal imaginings of what she'd do to Bellamy if this ended poorly for Finn. "Shouldn't we take the knife out?"

Clarke looked into the girl's anxious face. Her forehead and chin were a bloody mess, and she couldn't walk without whimpering, but her eyes were bright, and her voice was steady.

Octavia had just gone through hell, but she was strong. She was strong in a way that Clarke didn't know if she'd ever understand. Octavia didn't need anyone; she avoided the support of others the way Clarke avoided discussion of her father, and yet she never seemed to falter. She held herself up with a surety of self that Clarke envied in painful admiration. As much as she would prefer to pretend otherwise, Clarke always needed someone. But now the person she had chosen to need was fighting for his life on the table in front of her, and she needed someone else to save him. She needed her mother, a woman she had vowed never to need again. The betrayal, her mother's betrayal, ran too deep, and yet here she was, needing her anyway. It made her weak.

In all Clarke had ever learned as a medical apprentice, weakness was not something she could find in an anatomical text. But, oh how she wished it was. She wished she could find it, a traitorous little ball of rot tucked somewhere between her heart and her gut that she could rip free and crush beneath her heel. Where did she keep her weakness? She needed to evict it. Slay her demons.

But of course she was weak. Bellamy called her Princess, after all, and princesses always needed rescuing.

Shrieks echoed through the room as a particularly strong gust of wind whipped through the parachute covering the door to the dropship, sending a damp chill through the room that raised gooseflesh on Clarke's arms. They could hear the pounding of the rain on the soil outside and the roof of the dropship, as well as the ominous creaking of the nearby trees. Finn was lying before her unconscious with a knife in his chest, Bellamy was still out in the woods, and Raven was having no luck with the radio. The circumstances should have been enough to inflict adequate misery and fear, yet there seemed to be a hurricane-sized storm bearing down upon them as well. Wonderful.

"We can't remove it, not yet," Clarke sighed, shooting another anxious glance towards Raven's back. "We don't know how long the blade was, and if it hit something vital, he could bleed out the second we remove it."

She heard a loud clatter and curse from Raven's direction at her words, and her stomach twisted uncomfortably. That's right. Raven was Finn's girlfriend. One more thing that just didn't seem to be going her way today, and one more thing she couldn't afford to think about in that minute.

"Sure, but how long do you actually think he can survive with that thing in him?" Octavia pressed.

She stood on the other side of the makeshift operating table, ready to assist with her filthy hair pulled back and her hands sanitized with moonshine. Clarke would need her help once they actually started doing something. And they needed to start soon.

"I don't know," Clarke said, evading the truth. _Not much longer. _

The parachute covering began whipping out of control even as several of the stronger boys tried to hold it in place. The fierce winds were bringing rain and bits of debris into the lower level of the dropship, something they couldn't have if they were about to have a patient open in the middle of the room.

"Monroe!" Clarke called to the serious-looking girl near the ladder. "We need to shut the door."

"We still have people out there!" Monroe argued. "Bellamy's not back yet."

Clarke pursed her lips, but forced herself to take a few deep breaths instead of voicing her real thoughts on Bellamy Blake to one of his strongest supporters.

"Hey! They're back!" someone yelled.

All eyes shot towards the entrance, as there was a great commotion from outside before Bellamy and his crew returned, bursting through the entrance to the dropship looking wet, dirty, and triumphant.

"Is that the grounder?!" Clarke gasped, staring wide-eyed at the man suspended between two of the larger boys.

He wore a strange coat of leather and furs over fairly standard looking pants, and the dark tattoos and war-paint that shadowed his face and shaved head made shivers run down her spine. He was bloody, blindfolded, and gagged.

No one answered her question.

"Bellamy, what the hell?" Octavia demanded, leaving the side of the operating table to face off her brother.

"Just getting some answers," Bellamy said gruffly, shooting a cursory glance in Clarke's direction without even lowering his gaze to Finn's prone form.

_The ass. _Didn't he care at all that a boy who had risked his life to save Octavia might not survive the night?

"Just getting some revenge, you mean?" Octavia said smartly.

Bellamy shot his sister a cold look but didn't respond. He turned to the boys behind him and ordered with a tilt of his jaw, "Get him upstairs."

Bellamy made to follow the crowd, but Clarke stepped into his path.

"Bellamy, she's right," she said as calmly as possible, her anger for the man before her crackling just under her skin. "Look, this is not who we are."

"It is now, Princess."

And with that, he climbed the ladder with the rest of them.

Clarke turned to Octavia and leveled a serious expression at the younger girl.

"Stop him," she ordered, eyes flicking towards the ladder.

Octavia nodded and scurried off after her brother. Clarke flinched as the door to the hatch slammed shut behind her and then turned back to Finn with new determination. He was still alive, but that was about as optimistic as she felt about his condition if she didn't do something fast. She glanced at Raven once more; she didn't need to ask if there was any progress on the radio. It was clear by the way the other girl kept muttering expletives under her breath that they were just as disconnected from the Ark as always.

She took a deep breath.

"I'm going to take the knife out now," she announced to no one in particular, more affirming to herself what she was about to do.

"I just need a little more time!" Raven pleaded, eyes cast towards the ceiling.

Finn's breathing had become so ragged she could hear it ever over the roar of the storm outside.

"We're out of time," Clarke whispered.

Raven dragged a hand over her face and got back to work. Clarke admired her dedication with an objective detachment. She was so determined.

"Ok, _ok," _she mumbled to herself, trying to get her thoughts in order and wring any last-minute medical knowledge out of her brain. "Between the sixth and seventh rib. Sixth and seventh. _Dammit! _What's beneath the sixth and seventh rib?"

"Uh, Clarke?" Monty approached her right elbow. "Isn't the knife pointing upwards?"

Clarke looked down at the knife, plunged into Finn's torso at a sharp, upward angle.

"Yes?" she snapped.

"Well then don't you have to worry more about the stuff slightly above the gap between the sixth and seventh rib?"

She narrowed her eyes as she turned over his suggestion. She didn't know for sure, but it made sense. Although if he was wrong and she pulled the knife out at an angle, she could be creating new damage. Without a connection to the Ark, there was no way to know for sure, but it was all they had to go on.

She nodded brusquely to Monty, thanking him wordlessly.

"Just trying to help." He shrugged. "But if it's pointed up, you're going to have to watch out for the aorta or something, right?" He scratched his head. "Or is it the—you know what? Don't listen to me, I'm crap at human anatomy."

Clarke pondered his words as she stared down at Finn. Slowly, the panicked fog on her mind seemed to lift.

"No, no you're right, actually," she mumbled, her mind already jumping to the next conclusion.

It couldn't have nicked the left aorta; there wasn't enough blood coming from the wound, and his pulse was still fairly strong. And he was breathing alright; his lungs were intact as well. Had he gotten lucky? There was only one way to find out.

"Monty, sterilize your hands and arms," she ordered without taking her eyes off the knife.

"What?"

"I'll need your help if he starts waking up."

"Ok, got it." He nodded and began dousing his hands with moonshine.

Several loud whoops and whistles came from the crowd still assembled on the lower level of the dropship, cheering Monty on. Clarke ground her teeth together tightly.

"Raven, get them out of here," she ordered.

Raven snapped away from her work table and glared at the small group of teens.

"Everyone!" she shouted. "Upstairs now!"

They all eyed her uneasily for a moment, seeming confused as to how to take the brash, emotionally distressed, and possibly violent mechanic. She thrust an arm out and pointed firmly in the direction of the hatch, and they all eventually made their way up the ladder one by one, reluctant to leave the action behind.

"Clarke," Monty spoke softly once only he, Clarke, and Raven remained. "We've got to take it out."

The dropship lurched suddenly as something collided with it, whether that meant a particularly strong gust of wind or something more solid.

The storm wasn't going to wait forever and neither was Finn. She looked down at her patient. He was sweating now, his skin even paler than before with the exception of an alarming flush across his cheeks and creeping down his neck.

She nodded stiffly and closed a hand around the handle of the blade.

"On three," she said to Monty, her voice coming out steadier than she expected. "One, two..._three." _

And slowly, slowly she began to pull. The knife had slid maybe an inch when Finn began to tremble underneath her hands.

"He's waking up!" Monty panicked.

"Hold him down!" Clarke panted, all of her focus trained on the wound in front of her. "Stay still, Finn. Don't move. _ Finn, please," _she pleaded.

_Please don't move._ _Please don't die on me. I can't do this without you. I need you. _

Monty braced what looked to be his entire weight against Finn's torso as she pulled.

Finn screamed.

With a final jerk and slight squelching noise, the knife came free. Clarke stood for a moment, stunned and gaping down at the hole with the knife tightly clenched in her fist. The wound was bleeding, but not at an alarming rate. Finn had fallen unconscious again it seemed, but he was still breathing. Was he really going to be alright? Had she really done it?

Her fingers unclenched, and the knife clattered noisily to the floor of the dropship.

"Is it out?" Raven gasped beside her.

Clarke turned, she hadn't even noticed the other girl's presence. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"I need to stitch up the wound now," she said numbly.

Monty silently handed her the needle and wire, and she set to work.

Several painstaking minutes later, she finished stitching up the wound, and Finn remained unconscious. Raven stood on the other side of the table, one of Finn's hands clasped in both of hers as she gazed down at his face, a hard set to her jaw.

"Clarke, is he supposed to be this warm? Or this pale?" Monty asked, shyly.

She pressed a hand against Finn's skin. He was burning up. That wasn't right, was it? She laid her palm flat against his sternum, feeling its rise and fall with his breaths. His breathing was uneven, too. He should be fine, right? Or maybe he just needed time to recover? That must be it, and she assured Monty as much, even as her gut twisted uncomfortably at the possible lie. Something didn't seem right. Had she messed it up? Surely she had; her mother would have told her what to do.

She shot a pained glance at Raven's distressed, but adoring expression. She had to get out of that room. She had to...had to make sure Bellamy wasn't upstairs committing murder, or worse.

"I need a break," she announced to no one in particular, and began to make her way up the ladder, Monty following to go find Jasper.

She hadn't even made it to the second hatch when Raven's panicked scream sent her scrambling back down the slippery rungs.

"CLARKE! HE'S SEIZING!"

.

Bellamy blinked several times. With every brief flash of darkness he fleetingly prayed that the grounder would suddenly disappear, that the dropship would disappear, that the 90 teenagers depending on him that he had not signed up to care for would disappear. But blinking had never been enough to make his life easier before, and he doubted that rule would suddenly change now that he was on Earth.

What the hell was he doing leading this band of practically helpless delinquents? And where was he leading them, anyway? Certain death? That's what it felt like. He hadn't come down here to be in charge; he'd come down to look after his sister, and he was doing a shit job at that on top of everything else. But somewhere between manipulating the removal of the wristbands and watching Charlotte throw her body off that cliff, he'd found himself taking responsibility for the 100. Ninety-nine more souls on his shoulders, as if Octavia wasn't enough. He could never resent his sister, no she was _everything, _but he was failing her.

He looked at the cold, angry glare of the grounder. Did some of that blood on his hands belong to Octavia?

He had _already _failed her.

But it wasn't just ninety-nine more souls was it? He thought of three hundred and twenty bodies burning up in the atmosphere like sickening shooting stars. The innocent sound of the radio splashing into the river should have heralded more destruction, should have _warned him. _But he should have known better. He did what he had to do; he protected Octaviathe only way he knew how.

He was not a murderer, that's what she said. That's what Clarke's earnest blue eyes had told him. And he wasn't...but he was. But he didn't want to be. He wanted—

"Hey! Open the door!" Clarke's muffled, but frantic voice echoed up from below the hatch.

Miller opened the hatch and put his arm out to block her from climbing all the way up, but he took one look at the bloodied knife in her left hand and slunk backwards.

"Stay down there, Octavia," Clarke said in a low voice, looking back down the hatch before dropping it closed and locking it once more.

"Screw you, Clarke!" He heard Octavia shout from below.

"Thanks, Prin—_" _He'd turned to thank Clarke for keeping his sister out, but the sight that greeted him was not what he had been expecting.

Clarke had blood smeared on her chest, face, hands, and shirt, matting her curls. Her muscles were so tense that she vibrated, as she stood nose-to-nose with the grounder.

"Tell me what it is," she whispered, holding the knife so close to his face the slightest movement would have it digging into the skin of the grounder's cheek.

"What are you talking about?" Bellamy asked, coming up beside her in case she got it in her head to slit the grounder's throat, which she didn't seem too far off from doing.

"It's poisoned," she answered, without taking her gaze away from their prisoner's face.

Either Drew or Miller gasped in the far corner of the room. Bellamy wasn't sure which, and he wasn't taking his eyes off Clarke to find out.

"All this time," she turned to him, the knife sailing dangerously close to his chest, "He knew Finn was going to die, no matter what we did!"

"Spacewalker's dead?"

Something snapped in Clarke's expression and he instantly knew those had not been the correct words.

"WHAT IS IT?!" she screamed at the grounder, looking for just a moment, more terrifying than anything they'd yet encountered on Earth. "Is there an antidote?!"

The grounder looked back at her unblinkingly. Clarke turned to him then, her eyes wild and desperate, pleading.

"Clarke." He crossed to the pile of the grounder's belongings and handed her the case with the small, glass vials. "It could be one of these."

Clarke nodded her head jerkily in agreement, muttering, "You'd have to be stupid to carry a poison and no antidote."

She sorted through the vials with trembling fingers, the knife still clutched in her fist. He watched the blade uneasily; Clarke did not seem like herself. She began to plead with the unresponsive grounder, begging him to tell her which one of the vials would save her precious Spacewalker. Her voice was cracking and her pupils were contracted to tiny little points. She was in dangerous territory.

"Princess," he said warningly, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She glared at him and shook it off, so he wrapped his fingers around the wrist with the knife, demanding her attention.

"I'll get him to talk," Bellamy promised.

She panicked as she caught his meaning.

"Bellamy—"

"He wants Finn to die. Now do you want me to do something about that or not?"

He looked down at her, chest heaving. He didn't know what he was hoping for. Refusal to commit such an atrocity and assurance that the Clarke he recognized was still there under the frantic, unhinged exterior before him? Or permission jump down the rabbit hole, so to speak?

_This is not who we are, _her voice echoed in his head.

She looked to the grounder, and her nostrils flared. When she met his gaze, he already knew her answer.

"Do it," she whispered.

"Clarke, you don't have to be here for this," he pleaded.

"Do it, Bellamy."

_It is now. _

.

Bellamy spent the majority of his childhood within the walls of a tiny apartment that he suspected was indeed smaller than the top floor of the dropship. But he didn't always see the walls. How could he when there were such stories to be found between the yellowing pages of the books his mother found for him? The tales of ancient wars and fierce leaders chased their way around his imagination, expanding his world beyond the walls of their apartment, beyond the limits of the Ark until he could see the battles fought amongst the stars. He was a boy who kept a secret and spent more time mending clothes and stealing rations than he did playing with his peers, but with the help of those histories, he led armies, he conquered cities, he became someone for Octavia to admire.

This was not part of the stories.

The grounder's blood dripped steadily from his hand to the ground, the noise filling up the silence between each of Bellamy's labored breaths. Bellamy eyed the crude spike he had mercilessly shoved through the bones of the grounder's hand. For a horrific, fleeting moment, he compared sticking the stake through the other man's flesh to sticking a needle through cloth, just helping his mother fill another order. Just doing what had to be done.

But then the moment was over.

Drew and Miller stood in the darkened corners of the room, silent and obedient as ever. He didn't want to imagine what they thought of him now.

Clarke was looking more distressed than ever, her breathing almost as heavy as Bellamy's. She was staring at the impassive face of the grounder with an exhausted, almost reluctant aggression. He should have made her leave. She should not have watched that.

As if snapping out of a trance, she moved suddenly to the hatch, pulling it open on her hands and knees and leaning her head down into the empty space.

"Octavia, _no," _he heard her hiss before she called loudly, "How's he doing Raven?"

"Worse!" Raven's panicked voice floated up from two floors below. "He's still breathing but the fever's worse. I don't know how much longer—" she cut off suddenly, the break in her voice audible even from so far away.

Clarke took a shuddering breath, and her hair swung forward, blocking her face from view. He heard the sounds of someone beginning to climb the ladder, and Clarke reacted quickly, dropping the hatch closed and locking it once more.

"I don't think your sister needs to be up here for this, do you?" she asked as she stood on shaky legs.

Bellamy wasn't sure how to react to someone else looking out for Octavia's well being—and not even in the physical sense—in his place. He gave her a solemn nod which she returned before finally tossing the knife to the floor and stalking across the room until she stood before the grounder.

She grabbed him by the chin, forcing him to look at her.

Bellamy took a step towards her, but she held up a hand behind her, holding him back.

"Why won't you just tell us?" she sobbed, her broken voice echoing oddly off the walls, and backed by the howling of the storm. "You want him to die, don't you?  
The grounder did not respond. He didn't even blink.

"Don't you?! How can you just-" she shoved his chest, causing him to swing slightly against his bonds "—hang there and do—" she slapped him "—nothing!"

"Princess," Bellamy came up behind her, a quiet warning presence.

"He wants him to die, Bellamy! He hates us, and he wants him to die!" She turned, glaring up at him.

"I'm sure he doesn't have anything against Spacewalker personally—"

Without warning, she slammed both her palms into his chest and shoved, sending him stumbling back several steps.

"His name is Finn!" she screamed.

She whirled around to face the grounder, and before Bellamy could do anything to stop her, she grabbed the spike in the grounder's hand and _twisted. _ He didn't know who screamed louder, Clarke or the grounder, but at the first cry of pain, Clarke released the metal as if she had been burned and dropped to her knees with a painful sounding clang.

"Clarke!" Bellamy fell into a crouch beside her and tentatively placed a hand on her side.

"Don't!" She whipped around to face him, and he lurched away. "Don't touch me."

She looked more terrified than he had ever seen _anyone. _But there was something about the horrified lines to her face that felt familiar. He may not have seen it in a mirror, but he had worn that expression once—_a gun held in his shaking hand, desperate, trigger_—and he could still feel the ghost of it on his features.

The moment was broken by a banging on the hatch.

"What's taking so long?" Raven's angry yell came between the pounding of her fists on the bottom of the hatch.

Bellamy nodded to Miller: _open it. _

Raven pulled herself through the hatch, and to Bellamy's dismay, his sister followed close on her heels.

"Bell." Octavia turned to face him slowly after taking in the terrible scene before her. "What have you done?"

"Octavia," he warned, evading her question. "You shouldn't be here."

"Clarke's here," she challenged. Why did she always have to be so goddamned stubborn?

"Clarke's…" Clarke was backed up against the wall, knees folded up in front of her, hands resting limply on the ground, and eyes empty and despairing. "Fine," he finished lamely.

Octavia glared at him.

"Raven?" Clarke asked, climbing to her feet as if she had just noticed the presence of the two new occupants of the room.

"He stopped breathing," Raven said before quickly holding up her hands in a placating gesture. "He started again! But next time he might not."

"He won't tell us anything," Clarke gasped. Bellamy watched her half reach to the other girl for comfort before dropping her hand back to her side.

"Wanna bet?" Raven snarled, stalking towards the electrical wiring in the corner.

"What are you doing?" Bellamy demanded.

"Showing him something new."

Raven yanked the wires free of the electrical panel, and they sparked dangerously in her shaking hands.

.

He found her sitting at the top of the ramp into the dropship, just outside the barrier of the parachute. The ramp had been lowered at some point in the night in an attempt to let in some fresh air once the storm had begun to pass, but it was still raining. Or not quite raining, he supposed, something between fog and rain. He supposed it would be called mist. It was very early, the sky was the color of a fading bruise, just beginning to lighten at the edges as the sun threatened to rise. Most of the teens were still asleep, and the quiet seemed almost suffocating after the cacophony of the storm and the screams from multiple people during last night's events.

Clarke looked surreal sitting there in the mist, still streaked with blood as she turned the metal spike over and over in her hands.

"Finn's awake," he said gruffly, his heavy steps echoing on the metal as he made to stand above her.

"I know," she replied without looking up, turning and turning the spike over and over.

He looked down at the top of her head critically, wondering what the hell she was thinking under all that golden hair.

"I would have thought you'd be by his side, crying tears of joy that he'll live to continue to be a—"

"Don't," she whispered, so quietly he wasn't sure she'd spoken at all. "Just don't."

The past twenty-four hours had handed him a Clarke he barely recognized. From her practically torturing the grounder along with him to the present exhausted, despairing tone to her voice, he didn't know this Clarke. Making a quick decision he was sure he'd regret almost instantly, he sank down to sit beside her, leaving a careful barrier of space between them. She didn't respond, just continued fiddling with that damn spike.

Overcome by impulse, he reached out quickly and covered it, stilling the motion of her hands. She finally turned her head to look at him, and he was shocked to see the moisture threatening to spill over her lashes, and yet, her eyes still managed to look cold enough to burn.

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making fun of the Princess for crying. It was an automatic reaction at that point, to latch onto her weaknesses and pick them apart until she unraveled before him. But the past twenty-four hours had been straight out of a hell he never could have conceived, so he admitted that perhaps what they both needed was not for him to pull the rug out from under her at the first sign of vulnerability.

He suddenly realized he was still touching her hands. Her exposed forearms from her pushed-up shirtsleeves were covered with blood and grime like she'd just fought in a battle, but her hands were scrubbed clean, the skin slightly pink and raw looking. He quickly pried the spike from between her fingers and set it down on his other side, out of her sight.

"Ten days, Bellamy," she sighed, looking away from him to let her gaze drift over their storm-damaged camp bathed in pre-dawn light. "We've only been on the ground ten days."

Had it really been so little time? He felt decades, not days older. The freedom he had thought he would find for himself and Octavia on Earth tasted of bitter ashes. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

"I've been here ten days and I've gotten someone hung, asked you to t-torture, _participated—" _she choked on the air, bringing a hand up to her mouth.

He expected her to cry then, but she didn't. She sat stoically beside him as the emotion seemed to leak from her eyes like she'd pulled some sort of plug, and Bellamy felt as if the foundation of everything he'd built, _they'd built, _had suddenly exploded beneath him. She looked nothing like a princess with her dirty face and torn clothes, with such anguish in the blue of her eyes and the pull of her frown. _This _was what it looked like when she couldn't take it anymore, when her burdens became too heavy to bear. It terrified him. Clarke Griffin was not supposed to come apart. She was steady, she was reliable, kind, moral, honest, passionate… she was not this broken person beside him. He didn't want to see her like this. He didn't _like _it.

"I've lost my best friend," she continued on after an immeasurable moment of silence, "I've watched a little girl throw herself from a cliff. I've learned that my _mother _is responsible for my dad's death."

He tried very hard not to gape at her last admission. It didn't seem like the appropriate thing to do. She needed a listener, and despite his reflex to be anything but, he was inclined to give her what she needed after the night she'd had. He tried not to think about it too much.

"I think I should be feeling grief or sadness, but I'm _not. _I'm just empty and tired, so tired." She sat up straighter then, a wry twist flashing across her lips for just a beat. "And I suppose I should be disappointed that we couldn't contact the Ark, but I'm _really not. _ I hate them for doing this to us."

She turned to him again, her eyes desperate, needing, "I _hate _them. Is that wrong?" But she didn't wait for him to answer, "Of course it's wrong. I didn't used to hate anyone—not even Wells, not really—but now I feel it _everywhere. _I feel it so much that I can't even feel myself. Yesterday, I knew who I was, but this morning, I just don't know anymore."

Bellamy thought he might have forgotten to breathe. Had she hit her head? Because Clarke was the _last _person he expected to bear their soul to him. But a little voice in the back of his head told him that wasn't entirely true. They had just done a terrible thing, and he could feel it as one more thread binding them together as reluctant, damaged partners in their leadership on this planet that they were not, in any way prepared for. And maybe if Bellamy knew how to bear his soul at all, he'd offer her something in return.

"You're Clarke, just Clarke," he felt the words roll of his tongue before he was even conscious of the thought it took to create them. "And you don't have to be anyone else."

The look she gave him was so thankful, so _hopeful, _that he found himself continuing on, buoyed up by the naked _need _in her expression.

"You can feel whatever the hell you want—especially anger. You're allowed to be angry at the Ark and your mom. They were supposed to protect you—protect all of us—and they failed. You don't need them, Clarke," he said firmly.

Because she didn't. From where he was sitting, Clarke Griffin didn't need anyone, no matter how much she seemed to think she did.


End file.
